State officials on Monday lifted a ban on the harvesting of shellfish and mollusks from western Shinnecock Bay after testing of the waters showed that “red tide” blooms of an organism that carries a potentially harmful toxin had abated.
The waters west of Ponquogue Bridge had been closed since late last month to the harvesting of all shellfish and animals that prey on shellfish, like whelk or conch, and residents had been warned against eating the “tamale” of lobsters or crabs from the region.
In a new advisory released on Monday, the State Department of Environmental Conservation said that further sampling of shellfish from the western portion of the bay showed that clams did not contain dangerous levels of the biotoxin produced by the organism that forms reddish blooms, referred to as a red tide.
The toxin given off by the particular organism, known as Alexandrium, that had been flourishing in the bay in recent weeks has been known to cause paralysis in people who consumed shellfish from areas where it was blooming and even killed at least two people in Alaska last summer. This was the fourth year that the organism had been found in the western portion of Shinnecock Bay. But the concentrations were higher this year than ever before, according to Stony Brook University professor Christopher Gobler, Ph.D., who has been conducting water sampling in the bay to track the blooms of algae and other organisms.
In years past, the organism has typically abated as water temperatures warmed in June. Another red tide organism that has appeared later in the year across broad areas of the local bays for the last several summers is not toxic to humans but can be deadly to fish and shellfish.
The closing of Shinnecock Bay was the second such closure on Long Island, following the closure of Huntington Bay and its tributaries. The harvest ban for Huntington Bay was also lifted this week, but a ban remains in place for its southern tributaries: Northport Harbor, Centerport Harbor and Duck Island Harbor, according to the DEC.
on Jun 6, 2011